MEXICO TRYING AGAIN TO RESOLVE CHIAPAS MUDDLE

Every day shortly after sunrise, government soldiers march through this village, and every day, they are treated like an occupying enemy force.

At least one store owner deliberately closes to keep the soldiers from buying his goods, and a mural in town implores them, "Do not shoot your brother."

Visiting students from the University of Mexico, meanwhile, shout obscenities at the soldiers and block their Humvee convoys.

Despite official declarations that the state of Chiapas in southern Mexico is at peace, villagers charge that the government is waging a low-intensity conflict-- with the help of paramilitary death squads--against Zapatista rebels and their sympathizers. La Realidad is the stronghold of rebel leader Subcommandante Marcos.

The Zapatistas, a poorly financed and poorly trained force, launched their rebellion Jan. 1, 1994, declaring that they were fighting for the rights of the nation's impoverished Indians.

The government of Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo insists that the military is providing security and maintaining law and order.

On Tuesday, Zedillo's government announced a series of steps to help restart negotiations, including a vow to comply with the so-called San Andres accords, which guarantee land and legal rights to the indigenous population.

In an open letter to the Zapatistas, Interior Minister Diodoro Carrasco wrote, "The government is determined to take another step in the peace process, a step with frankness, seriousness and in good faith for the good of Mexico and Chiapas."

Since Zedillo took office in December 1994, the Zapatista problem has been a thorn in the side of his administration.

According to human-rights activists, at least 500 people have died since the fighting began, including the approximately 150 killed in the first few days.

Presidential spokesman David Najera said the rebels have demanded Zedillo's resignation and have threatened to broaden their attacks. "Local institutions have been debilitated," Najera said, "that is why the military is out there."

The level of distrust in the highlands of Chiapas borders on paranoia.

In the areas that the rebels control, for instance, checkpoints monitor outsiders, who are ordered to produce credentials, submit to vehicle searches and state their business before being allowed passage.

Activists assert that because of the military's presence, human-rights violations have increased and children are being used to spy on their parents.

As both sides exchange accusations, tensions simmer and observers worry that a volatile situation could get worse.

"It is a situation of permanent tension," said Marina Patricia Jimenez, a human-rights activist with the Roman Catholic Church in San Cristobal de las Casas, the largest city in the state's Indian region.

On Monday, according to reports, a clash between the police and Zapatistas left one campesino dead. A few weeks ago, in the first direct skirmish between the two sides in more than a year, the army and Zapatista supporters clashed over a road project in the hamlet of Amador Hernandez. Both sides suffered injuries.

The conflictis rooted in economics.

Some analysts argue that while northern and central Mexico have reaped the rewards of the economic revolution created by the North American Free Trade Agreement, the southern part of the country has been written off.

Although the rebels are not deemed a serious military threat, they have generated sympathy, especially in the U.S. and Europe.

John Bailey, a Mexico specialist at Georgetown University, said the conflict in Chiapas "shows a government that is faced with a problem and does not have the capacity or the imagination to think of different ways out of it."

Although the government has lavished Chiapas with resources since the uprising began, large pockets of the region are still stuck in a preindustrial era.

Here, in the jungle, a quiet place of unbridled beauty--with mountains and valleys and waterfalls draped in clouds--entire Maya communities live without electricity and without running water.

Analysts say the region's intractable poverty and generations of bad blood among the various Maya communities make settling the Zapatista uprising all the more complicated.

In some villages, rival governments have flourished, one representing the rebels and the other the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, known by its Spanish acronym PRI.

The rebels claim that the government is funneling money and other resources solely to PRI supporters in an effort to undermine the rebel cause.

The government disputes that.

In some rebel-controlled villages, local leaders have rejected government assistance, saying the government is not addressing their concerns but is instead trying to buy them out.

Gov. Roberto Albores Guillen insists that the people who have refused aid are "a grand minority."

"We do not want to put the rebels in a bad light, but we are making progress with concrete actions, with social programs, with schools, with clinics, with teachers . . . with respect to their dignity," Albores said.

Social programs, he said, are "the antidote to the violence in Chiapas. We have demonstrated . . . that opportunities do exist to move forward."